He smiled, but she could tell he was still digging through her words, down to the reason she’d brought this topic up. “So if the prince doesn’t know that we’re friends, it’s Ms. Francisco, then. No, Tash or even Tasha. I’m just a random SEAL that Uncle Navy sent to keep you safe.”
She nodded, then cleared her throat. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” His answer fell off his gorgeous lips so easily, and the reassuring smile he used to punctuate it sparkled for a moment in his dark brown eyes.
So yeah. She believed him. Completely. He truly and honestly did not mind, at all.
He added, “But you really should tell Ted, even though you’re, you know, fine... I’m no expert in relationships, for sure, but... It seems like common sense, not to keep that kind of thing a secret, if you’re looking to build something permanent. Long-term. And if it’s Sharon you’re protecting, or... ashamed of?”
Tasha laughed. “Ted knows all about Sharon.”
“Apparently not all,” he pointed out, adding in a voice that was so gentle, it almost broke her. “I know a thing or two about being ashamed, Tash. Trying to keep things hidden means you gotta drag that shit around with you. Secrets only fester—nothing heals. But when you put it out there, in the sunshine, and say, Hey, this happened, and that child I was has learned and changed—grown stronger—because of it, or maybe even despite it. Then you leave all the shame behind, too, safely there in the well-lit past. You move on.”
He was right. She’d learned that, and believed it absolutely. But she knew Ted pretty well—and there were some things he’d never forgive. She just didn’t want Sharon to be one of them.
“Car’s ready.” The man who’d gone to make the arrangements for the ride to the ski lodge came back inside.
Thomas turned to pick up both of their bags, leaving Tasha to zip up her jacket and follow him out into the overcast early morning cold.
Chapter Four
Sunday
Tasha was a limp, sniveling mess.
After they’d stopped—a good twenty-five minute drive down the mountain from where Thomas had been attacked and she’d been abducted—her armed guards had left her in the backseat of the SUV, where she lay curled up and still softly sobbing.
She’d been handcuffed, but her hands weren’t behind her back. Clearly the men who’d taken her didn’t consider her to be any kind of a threat.
Which was exactly what she’d hoped they’d think.
At first she’d cried because she couldn’t help herself. She was scared to death for Thomas, who’d been left to die by her kidnappers—naked and unconscious and tossed into a ditch—many miles back up the mountainside.
She’d fought back hard at first, trying to get away and screaming her head off after the man in the brown jacket had hit Thomas—hard—with the butt of his rifle. But the man with the onion breath, the creeper who’d copped a feel when he’d first pulled her from the car, had slapped her so hard that she saw literal stars as she hit the road.
“Who are you? What do you want? Why are you doing this?” she tried to ask, but Onion Breath hit her again, growling, “Silence!”
It was then, while she was on the ground, head spinning with her breath knocked out of her, that she realized she couldn’t help Thomas if she was unconscious, too.
And as she released her anger and fear in a flood of tears, she was helped back to her feet by another man—this one wearing black boots—who was far more gentle with her. He shot Onion Breath a harsh, “What the hell, dude? She’s just a girl. You outweigh her by a hundred pounds.”
She’s just a girl.
From that moment on, Tasha knew that was her super-power. If she could get them to think that she was, indeed, just a girl, she might be able to use that to her advantage. It might make them lower their guard and slip up, which would allow her to get away.
And do what? Race back up the mountain to find Thomas?
Absolutely yes, if she could.
Or she could use her phone to call for help, assuming the problem with her cell service would eventually be fixed.
But that plan went out the window—literally—when Black Boots and Onion Breath and a man with a hat that had ear flaps shoved her back into the SUV, and did a hard youie in the road, driving back down the mountain with the truck and the van right behind them.
Onion was driving as Ear Flaps helped Boots rifle through both Tasha’s suitcase and her shoulder bag. It didn’t take long for them to find her phone—and throw it from the car window as they took a particularly perilous curve.
There was no way it had survived its crash course straight down the mountain, but Tasha tried to make note of their location, just the same.
Big trees. Big cliff. Big curve in the road. Beat up guard rail with a dent and a pattern of rust that looked a little bit like a cow.
But they kept driving, and she tried—even while she kept up the weeping-girl facade—to mark the miles by silently counting, in hopes that she could use that information to help find Thomas, after she was rescued.
I promise, I’ll find you...
Thomas had said that to her, but she was the one who wasn’t unconscious, and this time she truly wasn’t a helpless little girl. She was the one who would find him.
She now lifted her head—and yes, the men who’d abducted her had, indeed, left her alone in the SUV. It was parked near a ramshackle cabin—pointing back out toward the main road, as if ready to make a quick escape if needed.
Someone had done something to the vehicle when they’d first arrived, opening the front hood of the SUV, and then slamming it shut—rocking the big car.
She’d curled there, still crying—but listening, hard, as she’d waited to be pulled out and dragged into that cabin. But Onion never came back to get her. Nor Ear Flaps. Nor Boots.
She was alone there, on that big back seat, as minutes continued to tick down.
There was a man standing guard about ten feet from the SUV. He was holding one of those big, nasty military assault rifles. The kind that belonged in a war zone, that people used to murder children in classrooms and people in movie theaters. But he was the only man out there—the only one, at least as far as she could see—and his back was to her as he watched the road.
She lifted her head to look again—and he still didn’t move.
Had it worked? Had she really convinced them she was helpless and useless and so absolutely not a threat that they’d left her essentially unattended?
Although, true, gun-man would hear if she opened the car door. There was no way to do that silently—or was there? She was for damn sure going to try.
But then, when she peeked up again, she realized with a jolt of shock that Onion had left the keys in the SUV.
They were right there. Right there, dangling from the ignition.
She peeked up and around at the back of the guard’s head, at the cabin, at the otherwise deserted yard, back at those keys...
And she launched herself up and over and into the driver’s seat, where she turned the key and jammed the SUV into gear and peeled out of the driveway, and roared back up the mountain, toward the resort—and Thomas.